Amazon on HN, recently:

Announcement of the FTC lawsuit; (2 days ago, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49529685

> An Amazon senior VP in charge of ads said internally that in Amazon’s auctions, “the second price isn’t set by an actual bidder, but rather by” Amazon itself with a “proxy 2nd price that we calculate,”

Listing practices found illegal in EU; (14 days ago, 0 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49393379

> The platform operator sorts search results by default according to the category “Recommended” or “Amazon presents”. While it refers to general influencing factors such as customer actions or product information on help pages, the Senate considers this to be too vague. It emphasizes that a mere exemplary listing of criteria is insufficient. Consumers must be able to easily understand which factors significantly determine the selection and how they are weighted against each other, especially with dynamic weightings.

And a blog post by Seth Godin describing their ad system preceding both: (17 days ago, 705 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49345263

> They know the best-reviewed, least-returned, best-priced model. The only purpose of the ads is to get you to pick an air fryer that isn’t that one (or for the best air fryer, to keep you on track to buy the one you wanted in the first place). The ads make the search worse.

Cory also wrote a blog post about this titled “Greedflation”: (3 years ago, 70 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35705872

> Where Amazon once guaranteed sellers that if they sold the best match for a customer's search, they would top the search results, Amazon now makes its sellers bid against each other to be at the top of your results, whether or not they're the best match for your search.